Fire at STT GDC Data Center in New Delhi Causes Extensive Damage, Disrupts Google Cloud Services
June 24, 2026
Fire at STT GDC Data Center in New Delhi Causes Extensive Damage, Disrupts Google Cloud Services
A fire at a data center operated by ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) in New Delhi has caused extensive damage, disrupting services for multiple customers including Google Cloud. The incident, which occurred on June 5 at the Next-Gen Tower in Greater Kailash-1, was reportedly linked to lithium battery units and has raised serious concerns about fire safety in critical digital infrastructure across India.
Tata Communications, which leases space at the facility, filed a stock exchange notification on June 5 informing shareholders of the fire. Delhi fire authorities confirmed the blaze was brought under control without injuries, but noted it originated in lithium battery units. The site, known as STT Delhi 2, offers 1.1 MW of capacity and is part of a joint venture between STT GDC and Tata Communications, which sold a 74 percent stake in its data center business to STT GDC in 2016.
The fire forced Google Cloud to shut down network equipment powering a local Point of Presence (POP) in the building. As of June 23, Google Cloud’s status page continued to report the incident as ongoing, with customers experiencing "elevated latency and non-optimal network routing into Google Cloud." In a June 23 update, Google stated: "Following safety clearance, our team has accessed the damaged site and is continuing to restore additional capacity throughout this week. We have optimized capacity across network backbones to increase available headroom and augmented our Delhi user-facing backbone capacity. We will continue to closely monitor latency deviations and packet drops."
The fire has caused severe data loss for some tenants. Matrix Cellular, a provider of international SIM cards, told Reuters it is struggling to recover two decades of data destroyed in the blaze. A Tata letter to the company, as seen by Reuters, acknowledged the severity: "Despite our ongoing best efforts to recover the data, the severity of the damage ... presents significant challenges to the recovery of the affected data and systems." Indian internet service provider R2 Net estimated losses of $2 million, along with the loss of commercial clients due to the disruption.
The incident underscores growing risks as India’s data center market expands rapidly. Tata Communications, which continues to offer ICT services from dozens of leased data centers globally, recently announced plans to re-enter the data center business through its HyperVault venture, aiming to develop up to 1 GW of capacity across India—with OpenAI reportedly set to be a customer. The fire at STT Delhi 2 highlights the critical need for robust fire prevention and battery safety protocols as the industry scales.
Source: datacenterdynamics
